


Crossing Muddy Waters

by slaughtermom



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 01:54:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14727744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slaughtermom/pseuds/slaughtermom
Summary: Somewhere in the vast internets is a fanfic I wrote 5+ years ago. It was before the manga ended and I always wanted to rework my original idea and rewrite it from an older perspective. Procrastination is a hell of a drug and I more than likely would never have picked this up again if my eight year didn’t start watching Naruto on HULU and I remembered how much I love Sannins. They’re characterizations and growth are some of the best in the series. Anyway here’s the start of a fanfic no one asked for. (2500 words)





	Crossing Muddy Waters

“People in the real world always say, when something terrible happens, that the sadness and loss and aching pain of the heart will “lessen as time passes,” but it isn’t true. Sorrow and loss are constant, but if we all had to go through our whole lives carrying them the whole time, we wouldn’t be able to stand it. The sadness would paralyze us. So in the end we just pack it into bags and find somewhere to leave it.” - Fredrik Backman 

Time was fickle. Fruit trees, those delicacies of peaches and plums took seven years from seed to first harvest. To those who lived without conflict, those lucky few children born after the Fourth Shinobi War – seven years was a blur of the technology advancements that for once had nothing to do with weapons of war. Seven years was being born into wooden houses hastily cobbled together in the crater of Pein’s attack to riding trains to the Leaf’s first cinema. A far cry from her own childhood. Seven years in the time of the Second Shinobi war was a scattering of training before children became weapons and the survival rate dropped to single digits. 

It was an old woman’s musings. Idle time becoming idle thoughts. The thought made Tsunade laugh; she’d spent so long with death a shadow chasing her and yet here she was – older than her parents, older than the First or Second and nearly… nearly older than the Third had lived. Had Sarutobi felt cursed as well? Surviving beyond the rest of his generation. Skilled enough to live but not enough to keep those closest to him alive. 

“Lady Tsunade?” Shizune’s voice broke through her private musings, raising her gaze from the tea mug gone cold to her first protégé. “They’re ready for you now.” 

Nerves pinched at her hands. Tingles and a faint dampness along her palms. Tsunade wiped them on her jacket, smoothing out the green fabric in a sharp gesture. Time was fickle. Seven years since the village was wiped out and resurrected. Seven years since she escaped death through sheer stubbornness only to do the same a scant year later. Once again surviving when by all rights she should be dead. 

Heels clicked in a steady gait. Confidence a façade that crumbled at the door of the Hokage’s office. She could hear voices. The apologetic murmur of Lord Sixth, rising and falling as he requested once again to be called by his name. The booming laugh in response. Loud, obnoxious as only he could be. It brought a prick of tears hastily blinked away. Tsunade knocked, her closed fist rattling the door on its hinges in a scattering of chakra, nerves and synapses scrambled. 

It was Kakashi that opened it. His mop of hair, its color and unruliness inherited from Sakumo squashed under the weight of the Hokage’s hat. He looked more like the old jounin than ever. A start of lines around his eyes and droop to his shoulders – that slow relaxing of a shinobi still chafing at the feel of peace. 

“Lady Hokage,” the lines around his eyes became more pronounced, thin material of his mask shifting in a semblance of a smile. 

“You got old Tsunade.” Jiraiya’s voice cut like a chakra scalpel. Striking organs without breaking the skin. She’d forgotten how loud he was. How much space he took up. Big shoulders. Big personality. The toad Sannin kept his seat, crooked grin wry under serious eyes. He stared much the same way he had the first time they’d met. Unabashed and cocky confidence. 

Seven years had been an eternity to live without him in the world. The cruel world tree with its dreams that gave her a taste of happiness. Like sugar coated ashes its sweetness went bitter quickly. 

Tsunade felt a weight settling in her chest. An internal sigh of relief and quiet oh there you. In her mind’s eye she touched him. She traced those long red lines. Fingertips passed lightly over the often broken nose and its permanent disjointedness. She touched the scars, new ones now that covered his neck and disappeared under cloth. Instead the Sannin stood sentry, brown eyes inscrutable as Naruto’s excited babbling echoed through the room. 

“You lost your arm Jiraiya.” She replied matter of fact.

Remaining limb lifted, heavily scarred fingers twisted from a break never set. Raised thumb and pointed forefinger with that shit eating grin and accompanying wink. “You’ve got me there.”  

The conversation veered from her, Naruto’s injection and rolling of his sleeve to show the bandage covering white zetzu cells. His nervous laugh as he told the tale of losing his own arm. Self-conscious of mentioning his rival’s name to the teacher who admonished him to forget Sasuke altogether. 

With the welcome respite from Jiraiya's gaze, Tsunade slipped out of the Hokage’s office. Anger was an easy bedfellow. It tucked in nicely with depression and despair. He’d walked away nearly a decade ago to recon on a mission that they both knew the chances of him returning from were slim… and she’d let him. Tsunade knew her strength. She could have refused to allow him to go alone. She could have held him back, by force if necessary and instead, instead she’d did the worst thing she could have: nothing. 

_ 

The fifth was deep in her cups when he found her amongst the high backed booths of one of the Leaf’s more shady restaurants. Tsunade chose the place deliberately. Cheap liquor and the indifference of fellow alcoholics – hardly somewhere a sane person would look. She should have known the Mad Sannin would look over the expanse of the rebuilt village and unerringly pick out her hiding place. 

Jiraiya didn’t ask permission to sit. An easy break in courtesy. Legs stretched out until they met with hers, he refused to allow even the semblance of meeting strangers between them. That scarred and mangled hand took her glass, draining the rest of the shoddy liquor in one swallow. 

His breath wheezed, a choking cough and watered eyes. “Good God Princess, do you hate your liver so much?” 

His hand was warm. It was the first thought that crossed Tsunade’s mind when she took the cloudy glass back to tip in equally cloudy liquor. “I was looking for quantity not quality.” She said plaintively, tossing back the contents like a child drinking water. 

Jiraiya looked softer through the bottom of her cup. Rough edges and deep set lines blending into a smoother form. He looked younger. A rambunctious jounin with a zest for life, as if the last thirty years hadn’t happened and they were just two teammates waiting for their third. Her hand spasmed, a crack running up crystal before she set it down with the careful of study of the very drunk. 

“Kakashi – ah the Sixth told me what happened.” 

Tsunade’s sharp laugh cut him off, loud enough to silence the surrounding tables with the force of it. “He did, did he? Did he tell you Pein killed him? That even with Katsuyu and the hundred seal I couldn’t protect the village? If not for Naruto…” 

“It wasn’t your fault.” Jiraiya spoke vehemently, grunting when Tsunade shoved the table, pinning him to the booth. Her childlike modus operandi of running away rather than hearing what she didn’t want to resurfacing in a mad scramble to the door. 

He chased after her much like he had as a genin, geta clacking on dirty cobblestone stopping just in time to avoid the splash of vomit. It was a hard reminder of their last meeting all those years ago. Had this been then, he would have squatted down beside her. Held back blonde hair and rubbed soothing circles over the gambler insignia until they staggered to a bench to wait for her head to stop spinning. But this wasn’t then and he’d been injured enough to not risk her wrath on top of it.  

“It wasn’t your fault.” Jiraiya repeated. “You were right that it was too much for me to do alone. Tsunade listen… I lost my arm. I lost ten years of time on some godforsaken island until I could get back. I should have been here to protect you.”

The marvel of alcohol to burn your throat and simultaneously clog your sinuses. Tsunade coughed weakly, leaning back until her heels kicked out in front of her. An undignified mess of a shinobi in a dirty alleyway. 

“It was my promise to protect the village.” 

“It was my promise that you wouldn’t have to do it alone. Can you forgive me?” 

“Fool,” Tsunade said not without reluctant affection. “You fool of a toad.”

“Guilty.” He replied, white teeth flashing in a relieved smile as he offered a hand to help her off the ground. “Guilty of all that and more.”

_ 

The train carriage emptied after its first stop. Civilians and Shinobi alike giving Tsunade and the liquor permeating from her clothes a wide berth. It should have embarrassed her, the dignity of her former office in the shambles of an old vice. If not for the pounding head and eyes closed to escape Jiraiya’s scrutiny it would have. 

“I can feel you staring.” The sharpness of her voice was back, a whip crack of words against the sound of the train’s engine. 

The round pad of his fingers traced along her eyes. It was a gentle touch. Light as if she was made of spun sugar instead of flesh and bone. Tentative as he knew how rare it was she allowed herself to be touched. “You have lines here now.” His hand moved to locks stiffened from the mess she’d made of herself. “And there’s white in your hair.” 

“I’m aware.” 

Jiraiya made a sound of exasperation. Tsunade knew he was fishing for an explanation, some answer to why she let vainness lapse enough to show if not her true age, a closer semblance than before. 

“It didn’t seem right. During the war I saw… I didn’t want to be just another picture of the past. Minato looked like he did the day he died. The lord First too and even Dan. I’m not dead.” Tsunade opened her eyes, clear brown holding his darker hue. “I’m still here. I’ve lived longer than my parents had, nearly longer than Sarutobi. I thought I lived longer than you. I wanted some show of time passing.”

Jiraiya cupped her chin, tilting her face from side to side and studiously ignoring the accompanying frown. “You’re more beautiful than ever.” 

Tsunade pushed his hand away, her frown turning to full scowl. “Don’t patronize me old fool.” 

“I am foolish,” he replied slowly, a beatific grin widening in response to her embarrassment “but I’m not a liar.”

_

The only sounds in the hospital were their footsteps and ghosts. Long gone were the packed rooms and groans of shinobi dying for the village. As far as she knew, there’d hadn’t been a single mission death in the last year. Peace and her protégé’s work no doubt. Sakura surpassing even the skill she’d held in her prime. 

“You don’t have to do this.” Jiraiya repeated, the first start of unease in his voice since she offered an examination. 

“You told Kakashi you couldn’t manipulate chakra. That you hadn’t been able to since.” Tsunade bit off the rest of her sentence. The Akatsuki were dead. Pein was dead and good riddance to him. Naruto forgave, she did not. “I won’t know if there is a way to restore it unless I look.” 

“You could have just told me you wanted to see me naked; I’ll happily strip tit for tat.” His reply was bland, an inane attempt to anger her into forgoing the adventure altogether. Even if it ended with yet another broken nose. “Though your tits are much nicer than mine Princess.”

Her eye twitched. Tsunade knew what he was doing. He knew what he was doing. Had this been ten years ago she might have fallen for it. As it was, the bastard was out of luck. Hand stretching up, she took a fistful of coarse white hair, wrapping he length once around her wrist and ignoring his yelp – quickened her gait to nearest empty examination room.

“Show me what you’ve done to yourself.” 

Remaining arm gingerly pulled hair from her grasp, a silent sigh of relief Tsunade’s lessened grip. She was as unrelenting and dirty as ever. He’d been foolish to forget that. 

“I hardly did this to myself.” Jiraiya spoke as he shrugged his shoulders out of his kimono jacket. It dropped to settle around his hips, leaving the armored shirt he’d worn since forgoing the jounin uniform. His inhale audible before that last vestige of modesty was pulled over head, leaving him bare to her scrutiny.

The human body was unlike its mind. Where a person could give up hope or the will to live, the body continued on. Platelets continued to clot in open wounds. Cells formed scar tissue and bridged breaks in bone. Jiraiya should, by all rights and medical science, be dead. He’d had no godlike jutsu to undo his wounds. No chakra borrowed from a tailed beast. There’d been nothing but… 

“The punctures on your back? Chakra demodulators?” 

“Yes.” 

“Hold still please.” 

Her hands pressed gently to his back, fingers wide as she sent neutral chakra along the pathways broken from his fight. Brows pinched in concentration, she sent tendrils deeper touching along bones and blood vessels, studying his organs before she was satisfied. 

“You’re wearing your neutral face Princess.” Jiraiya joked. He knew there was no cure for what had been done. How could there be? Even Tsunade wasn’t limitless in her skill and he knew a lost cause when he saw one. “That bad is it?”

“I’m assuming the rods stayed in for days if not longer. They eroded your chakra pathways completely. An attempt at reparative surgery would put too much of a strain on your body. The survival odds of the procedure would be less than ten percent.” 

Tsunade expected many things. Anger, denial, that stubbornness and will of fire that saw him through the Shinobi wars. She braced herself for yelling and was instead met with uproarious laughter. Jiraiya was laughing, laughing hard enough his body pitched back to the wall and tears ran parallel to red tattoos. 

“Why are you laughing? Jiraiya this isn’t funny!” She yelled before his remaining arm stretched out, dragging her to him in an awkward embrace. 

Nose pressed to the scar left by Naruto’s seal’s decay, she counted to ten, twice, before pushing him away. “What’s gotten into you?” 

“You,” he replied easily. “You’d think I’d for a moment I’d chance dying in surgery when I’m finally home. As if I’d leave you again or miss out on seeing Naruto become Hokage.” He pressed a finger under his nose, shoulders still shaking with the remnants of mirth. “And they call me the mad one?” 

“You’re intolerable.”

“You love me.”

Her smile was slow and all the more genuine for it. “I do more the pity, now put your clothes on.” 

It was petty, perhaps even nasty, but Tsunade took no small amount of pleasure in his gaped jaw and dumbfounded face being the last thing she saw before shutting the door. 


End file.
